Review: Why MACHETE KILLS Flopped

Before I start, here’s some facts about the money Machete Kills opened up to. Machete Kills opened up to $1.4M. That’s including late night showings on Thursday/Friday midnight showings for 200K. It made another 1.4M the Saturday after it opened which was under $4M in 2,372 runs during it’s opening weekend. Now, with that being said, I decided to see Machete Kills for myself since I for one, do not go by how much money a movie makes or what critics say about a film to decide if I want to go see it or not.

I am a big fan of Robert Rodriguez films, from the story he directed in Sin City to Once Upon A Time in Mexico to Planet Terror to From Dusk Till Dawn. I even loved the first Machete film. You name it, I loved them all. I love how over the top Rodriguez’s films are. So once I heard about Machete Kills, I was pretty excited. As I saw the huge cast of characters, the awesome looking movie posters, & the action packed trailers as the film release came near, I was fixed on making it a point to watch. So then I finally got to see the film…

Anyone who has seen a Rodriguez film, knows that you can expect to see over the top, non stop action, along with cameos from various actors. Especially actors that are known for other roles in Rodriguez’s other films. So as I was watching the film, all of that was there of course. But as I was watching all the gorgeous women running around with guns & all the blood soaked scenes, I kept thinking to myself, could this movie get anymore campy & cheesier? & the answer is, yes! It kept getting more & more campy to where it was to the point that it was just getting way too ridiculous even for a Rodriguez film.

Put it this way, the movie went from dealing with the heavy machinery of guns with the Mexican Cartel to all of a sudden dealing with Star Wars like blasters & outer space. They actually even mention Star Wars & reference some things from Star Wars. & coming from a huge Star Wars fan, I didn’t think there was a place for it in the film. It just made everything really confusing & left me wondering what the storyline actually was. If there was one.

Machete Kills was exactly what he did throughout the whole movie (which I have no complaint about). Just when you thought you have seen every which way how to kill a person, Rodriguez & Trejo show that there’s 100 more possibilities. Which is what I think was really the point of the movie. I feel that Rodriguez tried to see how much he could get away with in this film. Meaning that he really pushed the envelope to see how over the top he could possibly make it.

I write this trying not to include any spoilers but with this film, I can’t possibly spoil the movie because of how many twist & turns it had in it. I think that’s where Rodriguez mainly went wrong. The storyline just had too many twist to follow. I think it would be hard for anyone to follow. Also Danny Trejo didn’t have much dialogue. It made it seem like that’s what all the cameos were for. To kind of be fillers. The parts where the movie excelled at was the gore, some references to his other films & all the cameos. But even with that being said, it wasn’t enough to say that it was a good movie or even decent. I was hoping it would be but it was a huge disappointment. I would give it a D rating & that’s only because I got a few laughs out of it, along with some eye candy. If you really want to see this movie, feel free to do so. This is only my opinion but don’t have too high of expectations for it & if you are easily offended, then this isn’t a movie that you should bother with.